Chapter 24

24

May 12, 9:45 A . M . MSK

Sergiyev Posad, Russian Federation

Seichan paced the length of the suite's salon, staring out the windows toward the breadth of the Trinity Lavra. Kane had also taken up a post there, his gaze fixed outside, clearly worried about his missing partners.

She was, too.

Her team had returned to the hotel thirty minutes ago, fleeing the fires and the cordon of police and military vehicles. On the far side of the monastic compound, a column of smoke rose into the sky. A pair of helicopters circled around it.

She turned her back on the sight, leaving Kane to maintain his vigil.

Monk sat at the dining table. Kowalski scowled across from him with his wounded arm thrust out. A med kit lay open between them.

Shortly after Tucker had reported that he was in pursuit of Elle and Marco, Kowalski had stumbled out of the lower depths of the mansion. She and Yuri had hustled him off, collecting Kane from the alley. Minutes later, Monk had radioed them. He had reported that Gray and the others had opened a secret door, one possibly leading to the lost Golden Library.

In turn, Seichan had informed him of their own dilemma.

She stared over at the steel dagger with its carved black handle. It rested on the table. It was Valya's athamé. The blade had been impaled through Kowalski's forearm.

Needing Monk's skill as the team's medic, they had regrouped at the Old Lavra Hotel. Monk was supposed to return to the tower, but the priority was to attend to Kowalski. Even for such a big brute, he had lost a lot of blood.

"Quit squirming," Monk warned, pinning the big man's wrist down.

It looked as if it would take all of the engineered strength in Monk's prosthetic hand to keep Kowalski from yanking his arm back.

"Just put a Band-Aid on it already. I'll be fine."

"Do you want to lose your arm?"

"I can barely use it now."

"Enough whining. The nerve block will wear off in a couple hours."

Seichan ignored them as Monk continued suturing Kowalski's arm. She turned to Yuri. "Any response from Tucker?"

The Russian security chief shook his head. " Nyet. He still maintains radio silence."

Seichan frowned. There had been no further word from the man after he had taken off after the others. Kowalski had informed them about what had happened down below. It seemed the Sychkin family—with its generational history of illicit pursuits—had built an escape hatch out of their mansion, one leading through the garage.

Seichan clenched a fist. "Tucker wouldn't stay silent this long. Something's wrong."

Kane glanced up at her, as if he agreed with her. She knew Tucker barely tolerated teamwork, preferred being a lone wolf, just him and his dogs. It was a trait that Seichan often envied.

Just not now.

"Do you think he was captured?" Yuri asked. "By our enemy? By the authorities?"

"No way of telling. It could be a problem with his radio. But if I'm wrong or if he was captured by Sychkin's crew, then we need to know where the archpriest was taking the botanist. That's our only lead."

Kowalski lifted his good arm, raising a scowl from Monk. "I may know," he called over.

Seichan crossed to him. "How?"

"Elle raised that same question." Kowalski pointed toward the column of smoke in the distance. "Back in the subbasement. Before they took her. She was the only one courteous enough to speak English during the exchange. The others spoke in Russian."

"You don't speak Russian," Seichan reminded him.

"But I know sign language."

Seichan pictured Yerik Raz. "I thought Russian signing was different from the American standard?"

"It is. I have no idea what that big monk was saying, but he was clearly spelling something out with his hand during that exchange. Thinking it might be important, I memorized it." He demonstrated by signing with his fingers and wrist. "I'm pretty good at picking up gestures, but I can't promise I got it all."

Seichan turned to Yuri. "If we recorded it, do you know anyone who might be able to interpret it?"

" Da . Should be no problem. My boss Bogdan has many connections."

She nodded. "Then let's see if this leads anywhere."

They quickly videoed Kowalski's hand gestures as he repeated his demonstration. Yuri then stepped to the side with one of the team's encrypted phones and dispatched the file to his contacts, someone familiar with Russian sign language.

As they waited for a response, there was a knock on the door.

Seichan withdrew her SIG Sauer and stepped over. She squinted through the door's peephole. A woman, dressed in the hotel's crimson-and-black livery, stood in the hall. She held aloft a tray covered by a domed silver cloche.

About time.

She holstered her pistol and opened the door. She blocked the view inside with her body, then took the tray and passed over a thick roll of rubles. She thanked the woman, then closed the door.

With the tray in hand, Seichan crossed the salon and lowered it to the table. She removed the cloche, exposing two full blood bags, along with a transfusion kit.

Yuri had arranged this special delivery.

Kowalski sighed appreciatively. "Room service is good here. But they could've brought fries, too."

As Monk prepared to replace what Kowalski had lost, Yuri strode forward with the phone in hand. "I heard back," he reported. "But I don't know if this helps much. A couple signs were absurdnyy , my contact says. But others he got right."

Kowalski grunted. "Like I said, I wasn't sure I memorized everything perfectly."

Seichan focused on Yuri. "What was your contact able to make out?"

"I'll show you. But Russian sign language uses Cyrillic letters, not American." Yuri passed over the phone. "My friend sent this."

Seichan stared at the screen, which showed a line of Cyrillic letters with gaps at the beginning and the end.

Seichan frowned. "So, the first and last letters are wrong?"

" Absurdnyy , like I said. All that is clear are the four middle ones. Translated they spell out E L V M."

Seichan showed the others the image.

"Looks like a game of Cyrillic hangman," Kowalski mumbled.

Monk nodded. "One we'd better not lose, if we hope to ever see Dr. Stutt and Marco again."

And possibly Tucker, too.

Seichan turned to Kowalski. "Show me those signs again."

At her insistence, Kowalski ran through the sequence a few more times. As he did, she recognized a pattern.

"It looks like your signs for the first and last letters are the same . Whatever error you made in remembering the first one, you repeated in the last."

"What does that mean?" Kowalski asked.

"It means those missing letters could be the same ones."

She and Yuri returned their attention to the screen. There were only thirty-three letters in the Cyrillic alphabet. It didn't take long to test her theory. The answer was found in the alphabet's second letter.

Seichan tapped at the screen and replaced the question marks with the Cyrillic letter be .

She glanced to Yuri, who nodded in agreement.

She showed the two at the table.

Kowalski shrugged. "Still looks absurdnyy to me."

"What is it?" Monk asked. "You and Yuri clearly know something."

"This spells out BELVMB," Seichan explained. "A military acronym for the Belomorskaya Voyenno Morskaya Baza ."

"Which is what?" Kowalski asked, wincing as Monk inserted an IV catheter.

"The Red Banner White Sea Naval Base," Seichan answered.

"A huge place," Yuri added. "Up in Severodvinsk to the north."

Monk started the transfusion. "How can we be sure that's the right spot?"

It was a fair question.

On the phone, Seichan pulled up a map of the Arkhangelsk Oblast, where the base was located. She read aloud about the base's facilities: the dozens of submarines, the thousands of Arctic-trained troops, the hundreds of ice-hardened ships and equipment.

Seichan despaired. "The base's commander is a decorated naval officer named Captain Sergei Turov. If the others have been taken there—"

Kowalski jerked straighter, nearly pulling out his catheter. "Wait. Turov ? I heard that name come up during the exchange. Thought it was just a Russian word." He stared over at her. "Then that's gotta be the place, right?"

Seichan nodded. She withdrew the veiled apostolnik from where she had tucked it away. It had been severely wrinkled after choking out the guardsman at the mansion. She had done her best to smooth it out to wear on the way back to the hotel, and no one had commented on it—proof yet again that few people took notice of nuns, especially here, where they were as common as crows in a cornfield.

Let's hope that continues.

She pulled the cloth veil over her head.

"Where are you going?" Monk asked her.

She pointed to the window, toward the Trinity Lavra. "You need to finish patching Kowalski up. I'm going to take your place over at the tower."

Earlier, Monk had already bandaged her small bullet graze. The bloodstain hardly showed where it had soaked through the black wool of her clerical dress.

She turned and headed toward the door. "If we want to rescue the others, someone needs to light a fire under Gray's ass."